Things for ‘23
I make lists. It’s something that I do probably everyday, whether it be things I want to do in a day or every single place I want to travel in my whole life. Something that I used to struggle with would be setting totally unrealistic goals for myself, but over the years I’ve learned that they aren’t realistic goals, they are just dreams and will take a little longer. This year however, I’ve decided to incorporate my dreams into realistic goals that are big, yes, but could manifest in 2023 with hard work and just a touch of delusion.
Cultivate a solid wardrobe
I’ve sort of already started to do this in the last week. I realized that I genuinely hate all of my clothes, but at the moment I don’t really have the funds to just up and purchase a whole new wardrobe. I want to take thrifting more seriously and also start to make some of my own clothes. In the last year I’ve realized my undying love for maxi skirts and dresses and I can’t wait to buy and make more of those. They’re just so light and flowy and I love them so much. In the past I’ve just gone to work and then hung out in my ugly work clothes for the rest of the night after I get home and I don’t want to do that anymore. Loving the way you dress can make you feel infinitely more confident and overall better about yourself and I am so excited to see what I can come up with in the new year. Especially living in a relatively warm climate (la) most of the year I feel like I can put together some good looks.
Write and share more poetry
Okay so I’ve been doing this for a really long time, I write poems probably every day. This being said no soul on earth has ever read any poem of mine and I’d say about 70% of them are unfinished and just on a note somewhere in my phone or in my poetry journal, having not been looked at since they were written. I have probably hundreds of forgotten poems written over the last few years. Something I really want to do maybe not this year, but in the next few is to finish and collect about 100 poems and publish a poetry book with illustrations and things like that. That would be a dream come true and I would probably start crying on the spot if that ever happened. I think part of this is that I have to commit to it, which is something I’ve had trouble doing in the past.
Apply for Irish Citizenship
Because my mom was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, I am legally entitled to apply for Irish citizenship. This would grant me an Irish passport and essentially and all-access pass to the European union. It would make travel and working in other countries so much more accessible without having to go through all the red tape and headaches that visas bring. I love living in Los Angeles and don’t see myself moving to another country any time soon, but I absolutely love Ireland and it has been a dream of mine to live there even for a short period of time. This process is a little complicated and can take up to a year so I definitely want to get the ball rolling asap!
Celebrate every holiday
I could talk about this one for a whole article and maybe one day I might. Every year I tell myself that “it’s just one day” “everything will be normal again tomorrow” While this may be true, I’m so tired of being miserable on holidays. I want to celebrate New Years, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, my birthday (June 12), Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. I mean really go all out too. I’ve spent so many holidays alone and it’s been really hard on my mental health. Even though I might not have my own family to velebrate with, I want to still enjoy these days and not pretend like they don’t exist.
Buy a new car
In my life I have bought 3 cars. My first and true love was my 2003 Pontiac Vibe named Dorothea who was tragically stolen from me. My second is the one I have now, Agnes. She’s a 2009 Nissan Versa and while she does what I need her to, she is not designed for driving the distances I drive. The third car I bought was Sienna, aptly named a 2004 Toyota Sienna with 240,000 miles. Sienna needed to be turned on and sitting idle for at least 25-30 minutes before she would drive forward. Sienna killed herself. And now I drive Agnes again, but my absolute dream car is a Rav4. I honestly can afford it, I just need to get the guts to just do it. I think 2023 is the year. I’ve always wanted an SUV and I’m so excited.
Furnish my room
For a long time I’ve avoided buying things for pleasure or aesthetic. I move so much that it just ends up becoming a hassle to own too many things. Especially when I lived on an island, at the end of the day, everything I owned had to fit into 3 50lb suitcases. Now that I’ve moved to California and I love it here, I’ve decided to buy myself a decent bed, wall paper, shelves, and other things to make my rented apartment feel more like home. I’ve decided that this apartment is going to (hopefully) be my last stop before owning a home. I want to buy myself a house so badly. Obviously California home prices are insane so it won’t happen for at least a few more years. This being said, I love my current apartment and until I can own a home, I want to make this one feel cozy.
Take care of myself more
Hear me out, I don’t have an eating disorder. Sometimes though, I literally just forget to eat. Even if I do remember I’ll go downstairs to the kitchen to find something to eat only to remember I haven’t gone grocery shopping in a week and a half. I’ll end up just going to bed slightly hungry and waiting until lunch the next day where I eat at work for free. It’s not at all healthy and I need to start properly taking care of myself. This one is a bit vague but the way I plan to execute is to designate a day of the week to buy groceries and go in with a physical list of things to buy and plan out at least some dinners. I also want to tell myself that breakfast is essential and must be eaten every single day.
Run a 5 K
Part of taking care of myself is going to be working out more. I love hiking and I do it all the time, but that is more for pleasure and enjoyment. I want to start pushing myself a little more outside my comfort zone and start running. If I have a 5k I’ve signed up for I’m going to be much more motivated to push myself to get a decent time. Even if I start running and find myself hating it, I think I’ll be proud of myself for accomplishing something. I don’t think I’ll hate it though. One of my longer term goals is to run in the New York City Marathon. I can’t really do that if I hate running, so hopefully this one works out!
Read a book a month
I have a really complicated relationship with reading. It was very forced on me as a child and now I honestly kind of hate it. This being said, I really want to be a writer so in order to broaden my scope reading is going to be essential for me. I’m going to pick out a book at the beginning of each month and hopefully finish it by the end of each month. This just came to me as I was writing this out, but maybe I’ll write book reviews on here at the end of each month and that’ll hold me accountable for actually putting in the work and reading. I guess we’ll see! Honestly I think that would be really fun though and it would help me learn to love reading for pleasure again.
Re-learn the guitar
I’ve been dragging my poor guitar around to ever city I end up moving to and she honestly hasn’t been played in years. I bought this guitar 10 years ago because I wanted to play so badly. I ended up quitting all of my extra curricular activities at age 12 and since then my guitar has just been collecting dust. I really want to get back into it though. I have a decent foundation and I can already read music because I played piano for years. I think it’ll be different this time because unlike when I was 12 these things aren’t being forced down my throat, it’ll just be for enjoyment.
Fall in love again
I know you can’t plan this. I’m just going to put it into the universe just in case.
Write a book
This one is a bit heavy, I’m not sure I can realistically do this in one year, especially considering I don’t have a single clue what I would write it about, but it’s always been a really big dream of mine and I think I would be so proud of myself for developing the discipline to actually sit down and do it. A lot of these are about self-discipline, which is something I really want to work on in the new year. I feel pretty grown up but in reality there’s a lot more to being an adult that just your age. I have to start taking more responsibility for my own life. At the end of the day, and at the end of your life, you look back and you’ll see the outcome of where you are a direct result of the choices you make every day. I think that’s sort of what I want to start writing about.
Visit 9 National Parks
Part of this goes along with #17, which is my insane PNW road trip. I recently moved to California and there’s so much to explore I honestly see myself going to more than 9 National Parks, but I just chose 9 because those are the ones I have planned for right now.
Quit the service industry
I see this happening around September. I loved my time as a waitress, it brought me so much confidence and helped me come out of myself. This being said, I really am getting over the lifestyle very quickly. It’s completely unpredictable, where I work now has a very rude and entitled clientele, and I’m just over it. I do like the people I work with a lot so I’m going to continue working until I have a steady stream of income coming from somewhere else. I just feel in my heart that this is the last year I’m going to be a waitress. It was great in my early twenties but it’s time for me to move on to something totally different.
Spread positive vibes daily
This on is sort of vague, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about. How do I actively participate in making the world around me a better place? How do I add to the value of my community? I want to start giving people compliments everyday and to tie in with #4, I don’t really have anything to do on a lot of holidays so I think it would be great if I found somewhere to volunteer. Even after the holidays, I live in LA, I’m sure there are beach clean ups and things like that I can get involved in. I used to complain about “living in a toxic environment” and I really did live in one, but it’s important for me to look in the mirror and remember that I am the environment. I contribute to it’s success and failure and I really want to focus on not only making the world around me a better place, but also make those around me happier.
Start writing music again
I used to write music, all. the. time. Especially during the pandemic it pretty much consumed my every waking moment. Once I started working and moving around a lot more, I sort of lost my passion for it. 2023 for me is going to be about rediscovering that passion and writing down everything I come up with. This goal will tie in together nicely with #10 because they just go naturally hand in hand. I’m so excited to see what I come up with. I think a nice mid-summer solo camping trip with me and my guitar, some original songs and a fire pit sounds so nice :)
Go on an absolutely insane PNW Roadtrip
I am so excited for what I have planned in May. I don’t want to write too much about it here but I have the most epic roadtrip planned and I actually just can’t wait.
Fall in love with New York again
I always talk about how much I hate New York, but here’s the thing. I don’t think I hate New York at all, I think I just hate a lot of the experiences I’ve had there. I think when I’m in New York in the summer, my goal is not to forget my unfortunate experiences, but to just make new happy memories. No matter how far I go, New York will always be my first home, nothing I do will change that. I don’t want to hate where I’m from. I don’t need to love it, I just want to make some different memories there that I can look back on with light and love <3
Create a scrapbook for my twenties
I’ve wanted to do this for so long, it’s just such a mammoth task. Basically I want to have 10 scrapbooks, one for each year of my twenties and I’m already 3 years ish behind. I just think it would be so cool for my kids to look back on all my adventures and maybe even get inspired to go on adventures of there own. This is more for them than me, I want them to look at all of the scary things I did on my own so they realize that they can do anything they want in the world and they don’t need anyone’s opinion or approval. I don’t have a boyfriend, nevermind children, but I know that one day I will and I want them to be able to see everything.
Film and take more pictures
This one ties in with #19, but I want to take so many more pictures. I go on trips and do all these cool things and I rarely get pictures that I like. I take a lot of videos but this year I want to focus on photos. Memories are all we’ll be left with when our youth is over and I want to remember every minute of it. I also want to buy more disposable cameras and work on my disposable instagram more because I rarely post there at all. Having a disposable camera will also help me to have physical copies of my photos for when I work on my scrapbook :)
Stop worrying about time/ logistics
A lot of my life revolves around being young and hot and one day I won’t be young and hot. And that’s okay! But I need to stop worrying about my life passing my by because I’m doing just fine. In the words of Billy Joel, I can’t be everything I want to be before my time. I need to just enjoy where I’m at. Today for example, it’s New Year’s Eve and I wanted to go to the beach and jump in the ocean but I woke up and it was pouring rain. I wish instead of worrying about the fact that I’ve to be at work at 11:30 and I’d have to wash my hair… I wish I just went anyway. I’d have had plenty of time to wash my hair and even though it would be frozen it would have been a good story. I guess this one is that I just want to stop being so scared. There’s really nothing to be scared of. I want to just live life and not let time and logistics stop me from doing what I want to be doing. Yes, I have to be realistic, but there’s so much I can fill my day with besides working, I just have to be responsible for pushing myself to do it.
Keep your journal
It’s so insane to look back on my life for this whole year. I have the same journal I’ve had since I was 16, it’s almost finished. I find writing to be very therapeutic and I love looking back and reading old entries to see how far I’ve come. It makes be feel very accomplished by my own standards. I also have the tendency to gaslight myself into thinking things weren’t really as bad as they were and reading over my journal helps me to feel a little less crazy. Nobody listens to you like you listen to you, and I stand by that.
Enjoy your life :)
I can look at this big list of resolutions and goals and be very overwhelmed, but at the end of the day the only person who’s opinions matter are my own. So long as what I’m filling my life with is good enough for me, it’s good enough. I want to enjoy the little moments life is made up of this year. I want to document everything, create and change my goals, and move forward into a happier and wholly fulfilling life :)
